October 29, 2015

During my creative beetroot cook out in my little kitchen I turned 3 kg of boiled beetroots in 4 different pickled beetroots, It is actually very easy to do, as the beetroot slices is identical, the difference is in the pickle liquid.

I used a recipe from Camilla Plums cook book (Mormormad = Grandmas food) as inspiration using the ingredients, which I had available in my kitchen.

The boiling time for the beetroots depend on the size of beetroot, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot in thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

Pickled beetroot with Camilla Plum twist: 2-3 glasses

600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot

500 g plain vinegar

250 g sugar

1 stem of fresh thyme

½ teasspon black pepper corns

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds

Add vinegar, sugar, thyme and herbs in a cooking pot.

Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.

Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.

Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.

Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened.

After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.

October 27, 2015

When I am in Paris on business trip I somehow always managed to return with my suitcase full of Kusmi tea, yogurt and cheese. During lunch breaks or after a full meeting day I "run out" of the meeting room with a shopping bag and a long shopping list.

At my last trip I managed to fill my suitcase with various Kusmi tea incl this special Kusmi shopping bag with Jean Paul Gaultier logo, which I got as a gift in the shop due to my large shopping volume !!!

I always go to the Kusmi shop on 75 avenue Niel, Paris, as this specific shop sell the Kusmi tea in both the tins as well as refill without the tin. I do not see any reason to keep filling up my kitchen with more metallic tins, than I already have.

October 24, 2015

I some ago stumbled over a cake recipe, which was a combination of chocolate and beetroot, which I found to be a very interesting combination of vegetables in sweet cake.

So when I received a BIG portion of beetroot, it was time for me to bake such chocolate-beetroot cake. The original recipe, which I stored in unknown place, could not be located, so I went searching for another suggestion, and I here I found this recipe on beetroot-chocolate cake, which I made no modifications to.

Chocolate-beetroot cake is really love or hate cake, where is no in between !!!! I love this, but some of my work colleagues had their worst cake experience every in entire life !!!!

Chocolate-beetroot cake: 1 cake

250 soft butter

325 g dark muscovado sugar

4 eggs

250 g (cake) flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 tablespoons dark cocoa powder

100 g dark chocolate - medium-fine chopped

450 g raw beetroot - finely grated

2 teaspoons vanilla sugar

icing sugar - optional

Heat the oven to 190'C.

Whip butter and muscovado sugar into a light and foamy texture on a stand alone mixer.

Add in the egg one by one, whip between each addition of egg.

Sieve flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder and cocoa powder, before it is added into the cake. Stir this in by hand.

Afterwards stir into the grated beetroot and chopped chocolate.

Pour the cake dough into a round form (25 cm in diameter).

Bake the cake in the middle of the oven at 190'C for 40-50 minutes. Check the cake texture with a knitting needle, that it is baked, before removing it from the oven.

Cool down the cake. Optional dust icing sugar over the cake, before serving it.

October 23, 2015

Beetroot is one of my favourite vegetable, which I like to have a juice with beetroot, part of oven baked root vegetables or as pickled beetroot.

One of my good colleagues has some farm land, where he grows various vegetable for own use as well as sharing some of the surplus with us his colleagues.
So when I asked, if he could share some beetroots with me, I did not get a little plastic bags with 10-15 beetroots. No I got a feeding bag 1/3 full with beetroots, carrots, pastinac and onions :-)

So one Autumn evening I turned my little kitchen into pickled beetroot creation place. I boiled 1½ kg beetroot at the time. The boiling time depends on the size of beetroot, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot in thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

Classic pickled beetroot: 2-3 glasses

600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot

500 g plain vinegar

250 g sugar

1 stem of fresh thyme

3 black pepper corns

Add vinegar, sugar, thyme and peppercorns in a cooking pot.

Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.

Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.

Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.

Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened.

After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.

October 21, 2015

Baking bread in cooking pot without kneading the dough at all becomes more and more popular in my kitchen. Making bread this bread requires planning, as the raising for the bread dough is between 12-24 hours !!!

When I was making this bread this morning, I must have been a little bit sleepy still, as I forgot to remove the plastic things, which is keeping a distance with the actual cooking pot and it´s lid !!! Heating up the cooking pot in a fan oven at 250'C means, that plastic is melting. However, I do not have worry about this anymore, as the melted plastic has left the kitchen in garbage bag !!!!

The inspiration for this bread comes from the bread book "Det æltefri grydebrød" and the recipe called quinoabread. Anyway I made the bread without the quinoa seeds, so the dough felt like it needed more water (the dough was very firm), so therefore I increased the water content.

Wheat pot bread: - 1 bread

5 g fresh yeast

60 g sour dough (optional)

350-375 g cold water

1½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon honey

350 g wheat flour

150 whole grain wheat flour

oil

Stir yeast, sour dough andwater together in a big mixing bowl.Add salt and honey into the liquid and stir well.

Afterwards add the wheat flour and stir very well with a cooking spoon.

Rise the dough to riseat roomtemperature overnight - minimum12 hours.

Take the dough out off the mixing bowl, move 1/3 of the dough in over the rest of the dough, keep repeating this process until you have a small size of the dough.

Clean the mixing bowl for any dough leftovers.

Glaze the dough bowl with oil.

Place the dough again in a clean dough, let is rise again for 2 hours.

Heat up the cast iron cooking pot (1½-2 l) incl. lid on a rackin the lower part of the oven at 250°C (fan oven) for ½ hour.

Remove the hot cast iron cooking from the oven, remove the lid. Cover the bottom of the cooking pot with oat flakes, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to firm to the surface.

Place the dough in the hot cast iron cooking pot, put the lid back on. Place the cooking pot in the lower part of the oven, let it bake at 250°C for 25 minutes.

Remove the lid from the cast iron cooking pot, and let the bread bake at 225°C for another 15 minutes.

Let the bread cold down on the cast iron cooking pot for 30 minutes.before it is taken out.